


But You Are Not Permitted To

by InkfaceFahz



Series: Tangled Circuits, Tangled Minds [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Gen, Gore, Near Future, Other, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 02:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19802776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkfaceFahz/pseuds/InkfaceFahz
Summary: Moniwa leaving for unknown reasons shortly after the work done for the Crows has left the others in a distinctly different mood than usual. The androids, never mind Shirabu, were going to start seeking answers at some point in time -- it's just not clear how many more questions will arise from doing that.Set during or shortly after Part 3/Color Coded Speak.





	But You Are Not Permitted To

“What do you think he’s doing when he’s gone for so long?” Sakunami asked, looking at the pages of one of the old books that had been here since before the labs were established in the bunker. The restitive tendencies when Moniwa had left without them before had begun to stop being a standard operating response. Now, even the unquestionably loyal smallest android seemed casually unconcerned. Futakuchi had quit trying to talk to Aone the first hour after he had left a few days prior. 

“He doesn’t tell you?” Shirabu walked in with Ushijima, 

“Hey, Shirabu,” Futakuchi greeted as opposed to answering the rhetorical question, folding his arms and leaning against the couch Sakunami was on. 

“I saw him record that he was going to a second-born town. He keeps a schedule that he updates while I’m sorting any work he left out each morning.” 

“You said it had another note,” Ushijima reminded him, setting down the box Shirabu was having him carry. 

“Right, thank you, Wakatoshi,” he said warmly. Futakuchi noticed the last couple days had granted an abrupt acceleration to how close they’d grown. Then he thought of laying with Shirabu, every stirring accompanied by him seizing up tense, quiet but restless, while Futakuchi tried to soothe the sleeping human. But unlike the sense of being a security blanket to Moniwa, the closer Futakuchi got, the further the troubles in Shirabu’s brain seemed to flee. “Meeting some brokers… Which I’m betting has to be the Owls.” 

“I’ve seen Owls. They may be information brokers, but they’re not easy targets behind desks. They just are cautious enough to skulk in the shadows before they strike. They never choose a fight they have a high chance of losing. We… had an interaction with them two years ago, when you lead us, Wakatoshi.” 

“...What does he want from an information broker…” 

Aone looked around the room. 

“Don’t trust him much now,” he said simply, drawing all eyes to him.

“Good plan,” Shirabu said as Sakunami wondered, “Really?” Futakuchi shifted uncomfortably, saying nothing. 

“Shouyou. It didn’t make sense.” That actually silenced the room save for Futakuchi, who replied, “You thought so too, Aone?” 

“The child who injured himself?” Wakatoshi asked. 

“Yea,” Futakuchi said bitterly. “Use your head,” he tapped his own head. Shirabu raised his hand to his mouth. 

“You use the stock medical assessment tools included in your programming to analyze Hinata’s arm?” 

“I barely had to look at it. None of the breaks or dislocations looked like one impact.”

“His fingers,” Aone said, a slight tone of anger giving his voice a growling edge. 

“Easy, Aone,” Futakuchi stepped over to him and gave him a pat on the back.

“Shirabu, you still haven’t told me how you found me that night,” he looked the other dead in the eye. Shirabu’s stomach turned. “The one where you and Ushijima attempted to leave.” 

It was stuck in his throat. 

“... Parceled into pieces. Conscious,” Shirabu murmured. “ Voice box and right eye removed. Head… and main system connectors ripped off your torso, power supply running but with a severed coolant line making you start to overheat.” 

“You saw me and you tried to apologize, I think... before I passed out.”

“And by the time you came to, there was a limited amount for you to do. I do remember that. You just attached limbs and fixed my skin,” Futakuchi replied. “Yeah. I don’t have real memories of any of that. Just a sense something’s been  _ wrong _ since then with these fragments left behind. Did he remap my personality?” 

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Shirabu’s voice rose in pitch and he began to walk towards Futakuchi, before Wakatoshi grabbed his arm. 

“The only emotional subroutine I associate with the snippets of that night in the box, then lying in the lab like a butchered animal… is a fear of death. I don’t think I’m the same Futakuchi, and I think Moniwa’s replaced parts of me, reset my mind, before. And I didn’t have a concept of death like I think of now. He made me fear it like a human would.” 

“And I don’t think I could leave if he ordered me not to.” 

“Oh.” Sakunami said.

“He owns both of us, doesn’t he. But not Aone?” 

Aone shook his head. “No data inconsistencies.” He thought for a moment. “Less talking, less suspicion.”

“Actually, makes sense, since I run my mouth… Wakatoshi, where is your loyalty?” Futakuchi directed the question at the newest. 

Wakatoshi lifted the fabric in the box. White and purple robes with a brilliant motif of a white bird on the back. Shirabu looked sick. 

“No, put that -- “ 

“So you want to find them again?” Futakuchi asked. 

Shirabu didn’t reply. Ushijima, however, did. 

“I was once their leader. I once had a friend who died trying to protect me. Shirabu was blamed for this, and now I am here. Rejoining those who I once lead is what makes sense,” he said with authority.

Futakuchi chuckled. “It must be nice, being confident in what face you wear and what name you were woken with.” 

“Futakuchi…” Shirabu reached out to touch his shoulder, only to have his arm backhanded away, Futakuchi’s head turned to the ground. 

“Why don’t you put those nice robes and weapons you’ve been hiding from Moniwa since you got here on and get out of here?” He said, coldly. 

“Listen -- Wakatoshi is convinced but I’m not sure yet… And what about you?” 

“We weren’t made with any directive except Moniwa’s desire to have the real thing around. We don’t have a place anywhere else.” 

“You’re so defeatist now, it disappoints me,” Shirabu said, more coldly than he intended. “He’s still hiding something important from you all. And me.” 

“The others,” Aone said. Shirabu pointed to him, and Aone confusingly pointed back, but he spoke anyway.

“That! You told me about other androids, or people, and after that night that data was gone. You didn’t know about someone named Koganegawa, or a girl with a ponytail. Like Moniwa specifically went to get rid of that data that maybe he never intended you to retain. Maybe you brought it up to him and that clued him in, but don’t you want to know?” Shirabu’s voice was gradually rising in volume and pitch, crossing his arms. 

“You are just Moniwa’s stuffed animal, hoping he chooses to ever play with you ever again,” he muttered darkly. Futakuchi glowered. 

“You live your life, I exist an existence.” 

“With someone who you think broke a teenage boy’s arm?” 

Sakunami spoke up. “Aone, where did Moniwa find Shouyou? If he did something bad to Shouyou, it must have been one of the places only Moniwa can go and he got mad. He got mad at me once for going somewhere, but I don’t remember where. Just that he was mad.” 

“Disposal storage. He claimed.” 

“Huh, that’s weird,” Sakunami said. “Shirabu-san, are you allowed everywhere?” 

“Me? Well,” Shirabu scratched the back of his head. “So far Moniwa’s never stopped me from entering anywhere, but there’s places I’ve had no reason to go to. Why would disposal storage be restricted?” 

“That name makes no sense,” Wakatoshi pointed out. “Why would you have a storage room dedicated to things you intend to dispose of? We already dispose of waste.” 

Shirabu sighed. “I’m kind of reassured that aggressive literalism is present in you like the first Wakatoshi,” he said, and the android may have had the slightest of smiles. 

“Shirabu-san, can we go look there? Now it’s bothering me, and I want to know before Moniwa knows it bothers me.” 

“I…” Sakunami had a charming innocence to his appearance, and was so little compared to the other androids. 

“... Okay. Aone, it’s downstairs, right?” 

“I’ll take you.” 

“Futakuchi, come on,” Shirabu called over his shoulder. Futakuchi scoffed. “Fucking come on, we don’t need this right now.”

He gave in after a moment. “I don’t see what a trash room will tell you.” 

“I don’t know why you’ve distanced yourself recently, but it’s irritating. Everything’s just gotten stranger and stranger.” 

“Hey, it’s keycarded,” Sakunami said. “So it is a Moniwa-only room.” 

“Hm,” Aone contributed unhelpfully. 

“Any of your could pick up a keycard… Unless you had a directive that told you not to. Card readers aren’t as difficult and repair-heavy as a biometric scanner, and none of you have biometrics. It’d be excessive. A card...” 

“You have one, Shirabu,” Wakatoshi said, Shirabu looking confused before looking at Futakuchi, who made a somewhat offputting face in response to being stared at.

“That’s right -- one of you did pick one up!” He thrust a hand into his lab jacket pocket and pulled the card out. “Thank you Futakuchi.” 

Futakuchi looked away. “Yea, well.. You’re welcome.” 

“It’s probably the same keycard for any door… He’s paranoid, but he’s sloppy,” Shirabu said before tapping the card to the reader. The light blinked, and when he tried the door, though quite heavy, it swung inward.

Shirabu dropped the smile from his face as fast as he could, digging out a penlight and pointing at revolting, messy piles of bodies. Or not bodies. 

“The others,” Aone said, 

Sakunami grabbed onto both of the larger androids, suddenly anxious. “I don’t like this… Who were they?” 

“Futakuchi, is this jogging anything he could have missed in your memory core?” Shirabu begged, but when he looked over, Futakuchi was frozen. 

“Have.. have you crashed?”

“Shirabu,” he finally spoke, still staring into darkness Shirabu’s eyes likely were less adjusted to than the cameras the androids had. “Was my lip split with a large slice down my throat that night?” 

Shirabu’s eyes followed his gaze. He dropped the penlight, but his eyes had adjusted enough. It was portions -- but not all -- of Futakuchi’s chassis, mangled and damaged and empty of personality. He ran towards it, felt the hairline, and peeled the skin at the access seam, sliding it partially off. “I’m sorry, don’t look,” he said to the androids, realizing how distressing the human version of such an action would be. 

“At this point, we have to look,” Wakatoshi said. Sakunami, still nervous-looking, nodded. Aone had started looking at the other pieces. 

Shirabu finally pried the upper skull plate open enough to slide his hand in, and pulled out a soft dark blueish ovoid. It had cut wires running out of it about a centimeter. He held it in his hands. 

“He used a shortcut. He kept your hard circuitry to save time but not the gel circuit core.” Futakuchi knelt next to him. “This… is the you from before that night.” 

“Anonymous Jozenji Junker: Failed full synth beta,” Aone said, confusing the room. 

“Note,” he held it up, pointing to a full chassis with blonde hair. He read another line. “Unsalvagable; Power surge.” 

“No note on Futa -- on this, though,” Shirabu said. 

“Maybe he stopped leaving notes for himself after a while.” 

“He used to leave notes for Sasaya or myself, maybe… these were for Sasaya’s benefit if a test failed?” He turned over the body the damaged head had been sitting on, a hole punched clean through the torso. He grabbed Futakuchis arm and shook. 

“What’s with you?” Futakuchi demanded, still seemingly uneasy and irritable at the same time, holding the gel circuitry of his former self with both hands. 

“The. Name. The name!” Shirabu exclaimed. 

Futakuchi looked at it, attached to the forehead. “Koganegawa.” 

“The one this you remembered!” He pointed to the gel. “The gel contains circuits that adjust and change and adapt to create new connections. It’s where you… learn. It’s where your mannerisms, personalities… the most human parts of you are.” He looked back at the note. 

“‘Koganegawa Kanji, Biosynthetic Test Failure: Pulmonary Embolism. Power Supply salvagable’,” he read aloud to the others, his voice fading a little bit word by word. “Biosynthetic… God, was he trying to use parts of corpses at first? Why?” 

“Shirabu!” Sakunami called, admittedly still clinging to Wakatoshi with one hand, which the taller one seems not to take any issue with. “You said a ponytail earlier, right?” Sakunami brought another head over to set in Shirabu’s lap, which had somehow become their makeshift forensics table. Shirabu took it in his hands, instead. “It’s leaking something.”

“This doesn’t feel… regular. It feels like….” He was reluctant to finish the thought aloud with  _ like it’s embalmed _ . He checked the note. 

“Nametsu Mai, Biosynthetic Failure; Implant rejection, brain. Lifespan: 20 days. Personality decline noted.” 

“Stop it. Stop it,” Futakuchi repeated. “Stop reading them. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to know these are parts of people who some human I’m supposed to be knew,” he pleaded. “Can you imagine what we’ll catch from him if he finds us in here?”

“Aone and I could defeat him if we protected our activation keys,” Wakatoshi said firmly. Aone nodded. 

“I don’t! No, I can’t, I can’t I can’t,” Futakuchi babbled. “Sakunami, isn’t there a  _ thing _ in your  _ head _ telling you we have to stop?” 

“Like a buzz? I sort of have been feeling a buzz since we talked upstairs.” 

“ _ Stronger. _ Like. My system’s flickering functions on and off. It hurts,” he cried out. “Why would he make me hurt when I keep receiving a message -- a thought,” Futakuchi clarified. “That this isn’t good for Moniwa.” 

“Of course it isn’t! He’s not good for any of you,” Shirabu yelled, ripping off the labcoat. “But I have seen enough. Everything about him is twisted. He could have killed any of you, or these two, for these experiments. He told me knowing how you died would have deleterious effects. Wakatoshi,” he turned. “Do you trust me?” 

“I do.” 

“You were killed when I was on patrol duty. The band had made camp and we were between towns. It was soldiers of the Grand King -- if not himself. He had a longtime grudge with you. Tendou’s instincts guessed their position and got him killed protecting you. I was rushing to you and heard an additional two gunshots, and found you and Tendou run through with your own swords. I was blamed and given a command by my senior officer, Semi, to save face and die, left there with your bodies. Sasaya, Moniwa’s former associate, found me. Found us.” Reiterating it all so fast filled Shirabu’s head with unpleasant memories, but he soldiered on through the important points. 

Shirabu stopped for a minute, staring at Wakatoshi. 

“Learning that didn’t do anything to you, did it.” 

“I only hope that the punishment was not something the first Wakatoshi would have condoned,” he replied. 

“Though I am feeling a buzz now, as well. It was starting before you told me that, however.” 

“Yea, Shirabu-san… I think something about this room is designed to make our power supply send surges disrupting us....” 

“Thank you, please, let’s just get out of here, Moniwa could come back, please,” Futakuchi was by far the most affected, though each android was showing varying levels of dysfunctionality. 

“I don’t care if he’s coming back, we’re leaving,” Shirabu declared, leaning Futakuchi on his shoulder -- even the gyroscope that let him balance seemed to be malfunctioning. “But first I’m giving you back your real personality.” 

“Neither that little blob or the one currently inside me are real,” he said numbly, “Except for Ushijima, we’re all just the concepts of dead people as remembered by a lonely sadist.” He looked Shirabu in the eyes as he eased off of him, away from whatever was disrupting them. “Your input made him and Tendou more real.”

“You’re real, too. All of you are,” Shirabu said returning to the upstairs. They were silent. 

“But I don’t have a purpose outside of Moniwa-san,” Sakunami said. “That’s what you feel too, right Futakuchi?” 

Futakuchi looked away, uncomfortable. 

“Aone?” Shirabu tried desperately. Aone stopped at the top of the stairs, silent a moment. 

“Shouyou. Shirabu.” He said, before adding. “Protection.” 

Shirabu sighed in relief. “He did something that makes you want to protect people you know,” he guessed aloud. “Your circuits develop bonds differently. Because you know Shouyou liked you when you were alive, that instinct is persistent even though you don’t often see him.” 

“Great, the first Futakuchi really was probably an ass. Like it matters. We’re just surrogates.” He looked at Shirabu’s hand. “That’s probably not even functional anymore. Just toss it. You want me to be that version of me?” He tapped his head. “You said they adapt. Train this one to connect like that one did."

"I can't just… make it execute a command…" Shirabu floundered trying to explain.

"I can give it… program suggestions, and it may map them. But you don't listen to any verbal suggestions so why would your circuit core?"

Futakuchi looked at him a minute. "Ha," he said. "You think you know how to tell jokes."

"I'm serious!" 

"That's even sadder," Futakuchi said with a grin. 

"Oh, you left your coat downstairs."

“I don’t care.” 

He looks over and Wakatoshi had lifted the old uniform once again. Shirabu cracked a grin. 

“Single-minded about this, huh?” 

Wakatoshi looked at him for a moment with his wide eyed yet serious expression before he said, “I should at least be able to meet Tendou and thank him for his efforts.” 

Shirabu’s vision suddenly blurred,and he realized he was crying, and sank backwards onto the couch, rubbing his eyes while his sobs ebbed and swelled. 

_ I’m sitting in the desert. I’m waiting for death to come collect my payment. I was left my weapons, but that was likely just to offer me a quicker end. The swords stay sheathed. The bullets remain unloaded.  _

_ I won’t do it. I’ll wait. Death will come. It will take me like Tendou and Ushijima.  _

_ The silence is so loud you don’t hear anything until it’s up on you.  _

_ “All three of you corpses, or not?” I feel a slight nudge in my back -- like a workboot. My head had been nodding forward, but I look back.  _

_ A man with goggles to protect his eyes from the wind and some sort of sled with supplies. I blink.  _

_ “Figured I’d ask. I’m only looking for bodies.”  _

_ “You can’t take them,” I say. “I am payment for costing them their lives.” He looks at me bemused.  _

_ “I’m not sure what cult you all were in, but, like I said, I’m looking for bodies.” A gun clicks. “So am I bringing back two, or three?”  _

_ I stand. “I won’t let you desecrate --” He raises his hands up and waves them, still holding the gun, like he wants me to back down. Or calm down. He doesn’t seem interested in actually killing someone. I wonder if he has.  _

_ “Whoa, whoa, hold up kid. You seem pretty fond of these rotting bits of flesh. Miss them, yeah?”  _

_ “... Yeah.” It wasn’t wrong.  _

_ “I’ve got a… friend. We’ve been on this android project for a while. You knew these two well? Work with us. We’re getting closer to better replicas, if we get a good profile of a personality. Tell us who they were, we’ll show you our progress… You’ll have a place to stay that isn’t going to have you eaten by vultures in a few days.”  _

_ “... I’ll get them back…” I’m thinking like somebody who’s lost everything but doesn’t want to die. I’m just rationalizing that to myself.  _

_ “I’m Shirabu.”  _

_ “Sasaya. Takehito. Welcome aboard. Let’s get them loaded up and ice them back at the base so we can get you filled in.”  _

“Shirabu, Shirabu,” he heard from both sides of him, Futakuchi to his left and Ushijima to his right. Futakuchi seemed more obviously distressed, but both of them seemed genuinely concerned as he rubbed away the tears, trying to pull himself together. 

“Don’t worry about it… I just remembered something that I had long forgotten,” he said, aware the androids wouldn’t understand the concept. 

“What was it?” Sakunami asked. 

Shirabu looked a bit blank. “Just the last time I was wearing these,” he gestured. “It just stirred a memory for a second.” He stood up, pulling his shirt off over his head, and walking over to the box. He picked up the brilliant fabric, stroking it with his fingertips -- he remembered asking about the animal. 

_ “It was once native to where many of us are from, but I think it’s extinct,” one of the lieutenants explained.  _

He draped the cloth over his shoulders, first a white one like an undershirt and then the outer silk. There were closer-fitted pants the shorter robes would tie over and wider, pleated versions that would wrap around it at the waist to secure. He remembered that Ushijima had shown him how to do it properly. 

_ “I wish you’d stay until Ushijima-san is back.”  _

_ “Sorry. I would, but I have a better chance of finding everyone you told me about if I leave with that guy.”  _

_ “I know.”  _

_ “So! If you say I had seniority over you, your order is to come back with Ushiwaka when he’s ready, all right? I’d like to meet him someday.”  _

There would be ways to figure out where in the region they were. Shirabu looked back at the androids with a determined grimace on his face, which fell when he heard a familiar voice. 

“Those look so nice still, Kenjirō,” Moniwa walked into the common space. “Feeling nostalgic?” 

“-- Ushijima asked about them.” 

“Hah, really,” Moniwa said in a tone that wasn’t quite questioning. After a moment Futakuchi spoke. 

“Welcome back. Did your trip go well?” This distracted Moniwa from Shirabu’s garments. 

“Futakuchi, hello. Miss me?” He leaned on the androids shoulder and closed his eyes, pantomiming sleep. 

“Are you tired from your trip?” Futakuchi says while exchanging glances with Shirabu. He relaxed his position slightly, leaving Moniwa in a position that was less of a neck strain. 

“Mm, a little. It was worthwhile, though. It must have taken longer than it felt, though -- you’re all so quiet.” 

“Just being -- nervous when you leave,” he said carefully. Moniwa draped an arm across his back. 

“Well don’t worry. Everyone’s coming on the next trip. It’s a job.” 

“Oh?” 

Moniwa suddenly raised his head and opened his eyes, looking at Shirabu. 

“Yes… Actually… There’s a lot that’ll need to be done.” 

Shirabu didn’t like the look in his eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel really bad for doing that to Mai and Koganegawa, folks.   
> Next section will probably be 1 part followed by a multiple chapter story.


End file.
